Ex-Army chief predicts U.S. will prevail in Iraq
By Catalina Camia
Gannett News Service
SAN DIEGO — Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, who recently ended his term as the nation's top-ranking Army officer, expressed his confidence yesterday that the United States will stabilize the tumult in Iraq.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
Making his first extensive public remarks since retirement, Shinseki made only a veiled reference to postwar difficulties and used his speech before more than 1,200 Asian-American journalists to make the case for better media coverage — and public support — for the soldiers he once commanded.
Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, former Army chief of staff, spoke to the Asian American Journalists Association Convention in San Diego.
"None of us know the outcome," Shinseki told the Asian American Journalists Association. "(But) we will prevail because of the soldiers."
Shinseki praised the Pentagon's recent program of allowing journalists to report from the front lines — known as embedding — for giving the public a more accurate picture of war and dispelling myths from the Vietnam era about American soldiers as "war-mongering baby killers."
He urged the journalists to tell more stories about the soldiers, their families and their shared sacrifices, and to "resist the inclination" to dwell on a few war heroes.
"Telling our stories clearly, fairly and without embellishment will encourage the best of American youth to spend a few years with us learning leadership," Shinseki said. "To tell our stories, you must know us and understand us in ways Hollywood never can. We don't need matinee idols."
Known as a "soldier's soldier," the Kaua'i-born Shinseki retired in June after a 38-year-career in the Army. Shinseki was the first Asian American to earn four stars. His career included two tours of duty in Vietnam and command of U.S. forces in Europe and of NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia.
As Army chief of staff, Shinseki clashed several times with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, most notably over the general's prewar estimate that the United States would need hundreds of thousands of troops to occupy Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Shinseki's prediction about postwar forces were swatted down by defense officials who feared that his assessment politically damaged U.S. efforts to win support of Iraqis to force out Saddam's regime.
Yesterday Shinseki did not directly address those conflicts with his civilian boss, but drew laughs as he poked fun at some of Rumsfeld's quotes, "especially a line about anyone who knows anything isn't talking, and people who talk to the media don't know anything."
"In spite of that advice, here I am," Shinseki said.
AAJA has more than 1,800 members in the United States and Asia, including a chapter active in Hawai'i.
